David Berlinski and His Critics

I met some very interesting people at the TriaLogos festival in Tallinn last week. One of them was Dr. David Berlinski. I had not heard of him before, even though I kind of follow the Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design dialogue, but after the festival I did a more in depth study of the guy and found out that he is one of the leading and most outspoken Darwinism critics there are.

David Berlinski is a Senior Fellow for the Discovery Institute think tank. You can find his impressive CV along with a short bio here. His latest book, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, sounds counter-cultural to say the least.

What makes Berlinski stand out is that he is a self-proclaimed "secular Jew" and agnostic, not a Christian. Some say he is a "zealous sceptic, more concerned with false gods than with real ones".

Having a tendency to lose academic positions with what he himself describes as an embarrassing urgency, Berlinski now devotes himself entirely to writing. In Tallinn he said he has been fired from every professorship he's ever had. The reason? His anti-Darwinism.

Ben Stein's new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed includes numerous Darwinism critics - professors and scientists - who have been ousted from the "scientific community" for daring to question the status quo. A trailer of the documentary - which probably will never air in Finland (purported "low sales" as censorship justification) - can be seen here.* In the trailer, Berlinski is the man with the umbrella Stein shakes hands with and he is seen a few seconds later leaning back in an armchair in thought.

I must add that though Berlinski says that "everyone knows the evolution theory is a gas-bag" and calls evolutionary psychology "an enormous wasteland", he is not wholly impressed with the ID movement's attempts at explaining the questions that Darwinism quite obviously fails to explain. In Darwinism Versus Intelligent Design he states his independence from both. I recommend reading both the Darwinists' and the ID scientists' response to his critique. Halfway through the piece the podium is given to Berlinski who gracefully replies to each one.

I intend to attend a lecture given by the Dean of the Polytechnic University, Dr. Matti Leisola, titled Has Science Buried Religion? in Lahti this upcoming Wednesday at seven o'clock. The talk is part of a apologetic series offered by Studia Generalia.

* I checked the Amazon reader ratings for the documentary. It got 3 out of 5 stars. How so? If you look more carefully, it got only either ones or full fives, nothing in between. The pro-Darwinists gave it ones and the others a five.